Onondaga County Man Sentenced to 24 Months for Investment Fraud

SYRACUSE, NEW YORK – Charles H. Riel, age 60, of Clay, New York, was sentenced today by Senior United States District Court Judge Frederick J. Scullin, Jr. to serve 24-months’ imprisonment, to be followed by three years of post-release supervision for defrauding investors of hundreds of thousands of dollars.  As part of his sentence, Riel was ordered to pay $197,500 in restitution to his victims.  The announcement was made by United States Attorney Grant C. Jaquith, James Hendricks, Special Agent in Charge of the Albany Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and Jonathan D. Larsen, Special Agent in Charge of the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), New York Field Division.

As part of his guilty plea, Riel admitted that he was the founder, principal member, and officer of REinvest, LLC, a New York limited liability company based in Clay.  From June 2010, through May 2014, Riel provided false, fraudulent, and misleading information about REinvest, LLC, including historical rates of return on supposed REinvest LLC investments and fictitious testimonials touting the financial successes of non-existent REinvest, LLC investors. As part of his guilty plea, Riel also admitted that he collected money from a total of five investors, all of whom had received false and fraudulent information regarding the nature of Riel’s business and how their funds would be utilized.  Riel used a substantial portion of the monies received from investors to pay for his own personal living expenses rather than investing the funds in ways that could result in a legitimate return.  He also used money from later investors to pay back a portion of the investment of an earlier investor.

This case was investigated by IRS-CI and the FBI, and was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Nicolas Commandeur and Michael D. Gadarian.